


Seeing Red in a World Gone Gray

by fannishliss



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Character Turned Into Vampire, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-08
Updated: 2013-10-08
Packaged: 2017-12-28 18:02:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/994889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fannishliss/pseuds/fannishliss
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>ficlet about Kate, one of the vampires in  1.20 "Dead Man's Blood"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Seeing Red in a World Gone Gray

One thing Kate could never figure out, after, was where all the colors had gone. Before, Kate had been a proper young lady.  She had known how to embroider.  She'd taken watercolor lessons.  At school, she'd studied the old European masters.  She could remember -- no, that was a lie.  Before, there had been _color_. She at least knew there had been the idea of color.  After, there was only gray, an endless world of gray, ranging between almost white and nearly black.

Before, there had been the idea of _helping people_.  Kate remembered enough to feign it when she could use it for trapping.  Trapping was important. It kept food coming.  Food kept off the hunger.  The hunger was pain, weakness,  fear.  Blood was warmth -- no, more, it was living again.  While the blood filled her mouth, her throat, her veins, Kate almost remembered _red_. Full of blood, Kate almost remembered _love_ \-- and so that's what she called what she felt for the mate, Luther, almost blood to her. In his arms, she could almost, almost feel alive.

Kate remembered - lie! -- but  Kate thought that girls like she had been had slept in beds, in houses, and Luther was safe and warm, and he always found her a bed, and held her in his arms.  So she wanted to be _before_ to him -- giving him presents to make him smile.  Luther smiled, even when he wasn't having fun with blood.

So,  trapping was _fun_ \-- fun was when the hunger was sharp but the blood was right there, right there in her arms, and she only played at tasting, kept her fangs from ripping in.

Other things were almost _fun_ \-- doing them hard enough felt less like hunger. Dancing, the way that before had meant sex;  liquor, hot, almost like blood; cars, really fast ones, though the paint was old and chipped, but now, _after_ , she couldn't really see colors anyway.  All the cars were gray, so what.  _Fast_ was what they were.  _Fast_ meant _fun, feed, fly -- fast_ meant not being trapped yourself  --another bed somewhere new out of the sun.

Only one thing was more important than blood.  No one ever said so to Kate, she just knew it was very important -- and that was, feeding the blood sometimes.  The blood knew when it should be fed. The high of feeding the blood was an ecstasy, a swirl of holy intent, and it was easy to feel you were being used by something vast. Flowing back and forth, blood feeding blood -- and feeding the blood was better than feeling no hunger.  The emptying veins almost sighed in relief -- Kate could feel them relax as they emptied.  The emptying brain felt no fear, calmed its hyper-alertness -- the blood was being fed, and nothing else mattered.  As it flowed it almost seemed to whisper, _yes, yes._

So Kate was ready to play a little when she trapped the monster.  She saw its beautiful car, so black, and she could see how really black it was, and she could even see by the open hood, the cleanliness and newness of the parts of its engine.  Kate took a chance to have fun with the monster -- it was almost as pretty  as Luther -- maybe the blood would even rise up, demanding to be shared.

But no, the monster only wanted to kill her, kill Luther, kill her whole family.

In the end, the monster's pack alpha shot Luther, and Kate had to be dragged away screaming, as her new daughter peeled her out of there in Luther's own fast, gray car.

Kate would remember their foul stench in her nostrils, though their blood had smelled so sweet. But for now, the blood rose up in her in a wave -- the blood her mate had shared with her so long ago -- it cried out sharply in her soul when Luther went down, and something inside her went down with him. 

The blood, Kate thought, Luther's blood, still inside me, even after all these years.

"You okay?" the new daughter said to Kate, several hours' drive later. 

"No. No," said Kate, "No, I'm fucking not okay."

Their fast gray car had carried them loudly but smoothly  to a new bolt hole, and there they'd lie low for a few days, until the blood told them what to do next.

The new daughter lay down next to her, snuggled in close.  Kate wanted to lash out, to destroy the invasive thing, but a whisper of Luther's blood still rushed within the daughter's veins, and Kate keened in loss.

One day, she promised, if she ever caught the scent of that monster again, it or its fast black car, she would take them down, and on that day, she'd show the whole world _red_.  
   



End file.
